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Smartphone Shootout
An anonymous reader writes "InformationWeek's David DeJean makes the mistake of trying to compare the experience of Web surfing on a BlackBerry, Palm, and HTC smartphones to the experience on the iPhone. According to the DeJean, the three don't come close, but it's very interesting to read about the pros and cons of what can (and can't) be done with current mobile hardware and software."
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Funny:
One thing that became obvious to me as I looked at these various Web interfaces is that data speed isn't as important as good software.
You think????
The good news, as you might expect, is the Apple iPhone. The genius of Apple is its ability, over and over again, to completely reinvent, from the ground up, the user interface for hardware, and to support it with brilliant software. Web browsing on the iPhone is a paradigm shift, a completely different experience -- just as the BlackBerry was, in its time, a paradigm shift.
The elements of the technology that makes the iPhone so different will find their way into other devices, just as the BlackBerry's thumbpad and push e-mail have become more or less standard on smartphones. Touchscreens and direct interaction with the Web page will become standards of their own sort because they've come along just in time as computing, both personal and business, moves to the Web.
I've stated this to many people who've asked me about the iPhone. Even if it FAILS, it's technology, features, etc. will be copied into many other phones.
What about the NokiaE70 (this
links to Maddox's comparison between E70 & IPhone.
I've got both a Blackberry 8700g and an iPhone - the former used for work e-mail and the latter for personal stuff. Before I got the iPhone, I loved my Blackberry. It was a big improvement over my RAZR at the time, and fairly fast due to the server-side processing of the websites I visited with it.
Then I got the iPhone and now I'm probably going to dump my Blackberry. Having and using the iPhone has soured my Blackberry experience. I'm now tired of seeing the HTML in e-mails instead of viewing the full e-mail. (For those of you without a Blackberry, it absolutely sucks at HTML mail - it displays all the code instead of stripping it out, FWIW, I use the client-side push instead of server-side push so that may be the problem) Having the iPhone and seeing e-mail as it was meant to be seen changed that.
Similarly the mostly-full version of Safari has changed my usage of the Blackberry's crippled browser.
As the article states, the iPhone is not without its problems. Safari crashes (I've never seen the Blackberry browser ever crash) semi-often, say once every 2-3 days in my usage, and its lack of Flash support is annoying. I haven't missed Java yet.
Data speed is it's albatross, but with the "real" web, I've personally been able to look beyond its mobile speed deficiency. When it's on a fast Wifi network, it REALLY shines and I'm still amazed by how well it does in rendering sites. Youtube has never looked better.
I think the question you meant to ask is, "do I really need to be that connected." You probably answered correctly.
But what about the question you actually asked? Do people need to be that connected? Well I really need to be that connected and I chose my phone with that in mind. If a lot of other people agree with me, they'll make a similar choice. If no one felt they needed this, these platforms would die out, wouldn't they? But that's not really happening, is it?
There are hundreds of phones that basically just make phone calls. And there are plenty of phones that can do most of the fancy stuff, but are still small, simple and easy to use (like my Nokia 6300). If I want a new ringtone I just bluetooth the mp3/4 across. I can't believe that *all* those phones aren't available in the US.
Not strictly a phone, but the nokia n800 has the best portable web I have experienced. 800x480 resolution combined with Opera works great for everything, including AJAX applications such as gmail.
Opera Mini 3 and beta 4 are very impressive browsers...and beta 4 shares many of the same features of Safari, including page zoom.
A HUGE advantage of PalmOS-based and Windows-based phones is that you can actually add software to them. Thus, such a comparison is meaningless. Don't like Blazer? Replace it with Opera. What are you doing on the iPhone? Sure Safari is great...but let's talk about the datebook application that takes half a dozen clicks to set the time of an appt (rather than me just clicking on the time band on a PalmOS unit)...or being forced to delete email messages one at a time (unlike a PalmOS unit...on which I frequently hit "select all" and then "delete" if I have read all the message already on my desktop). Even those advantages to palmOS are against the DEFAULT applications...and both applications can be replaced with countless other commercial, shareware, and freeware alternatives. Extrapolate to all of the other applications installed.
Yes, the Palm Blazer web browser is insanely lame...and most users will not replace it. I am not making excuses for Palm. They should have replaced this application with something more powerful years ago...and Apple is innovating...and I welcome our new overlords...if only to motivate the other slackers, but let's be fair. These love letters to the iPhone masking themselves as fair and unbiased reviews are getting tiring.
Here's my distilled version of the article...made objective...at least for the PalmOS:
- The iPhone browser rocks...and it is a good thing because you are locked into it. Oh yeah, connection speed is horrible unless you are using wifi. Not exactly a browser issue, but hard to ignore.
- Palm blazer is okay, but has problems with many sites and takes awhile to render pages.
- You can replace Blazer with Opera, but you'll have to find a JVM first, install it, and then twiddle settings forever to make it stable. Why the heck does Palm make Java apps second class citizens? Oh yeah, that is a business decision. Nevermind. Like most Palm users, I can't wait until "universe" gets out of beta...and, unlike the iPhone, I'll actually be able to install it.
Man, if Apple would just open up the iPhone and obviate the need for folks to reverse engineer every application, I would just shut my pie hole. The availability of one terminal application isn't cutting it for me. Guess I'll see what the future holds...and hopefully it's going to be a 3G future.
I'm willing to bet you've never used an iPhone day to day for any signifcant amount of time.
I've had mine for a few weeks now. I use it for movies, music, my primary camera, and it is also my primary Internet connection because I have moral objections to giving comcast money. It is, of course my only phone as well.
I've never even come close to draining the battery in a single day, even using it to browse for hours while listening to music, or streaming h264 video over wifi, using it as a phone, etc.
Your claims are based entrely on uninformed opinion, and NOT any sort of experience or fact.
Also, the browsing experience is perfectly fine. The ability to easily and autmatically zoom to content negates the claim of screen real estate. Everything can be as large or as small as you like.
In short, you are a well spoken troll, but a troll nonetheless.
I have to disagree with you. The problem with the "all-in-one" model has traditionally been that you get a device that's a not-even-jack of all trades, master of nothing. There's a tremendous effort to cram everything possible into one device without any good design on how to have these features coexist. The result, in my assessment, has always been a device that isn't truly worth carrying around.
I've tried using devices from Palm, Blackberry, and Microsoft, and in each case I feel that same annoyance-- it does a lot of things, but does each of them too poorly. And they're big and clunky. Now, I have an iPhone, and it doesn't do everything, but what it does it does pretty well. Many have complained the that the touch screen interface would make it hard to type, but for the most part those complaints weren't made from experience. The touch screen, for the most part, has successfully navigated the interface problem of having all-in-one devices. Instead of trying to come up with one set of buttons that serves all the different functions, you make the buttons change depending on what you're doing.
You complain about the battery, but as an iPhone owner, I'll tell you that I regularly go a full day or two without charging it. That's not the best battery lifetime I've ever gotten, but it's acceptable. Admittedly, I mostly use the phone, PIM, and iPod functions. I don't really use it to watch video very often, and I only use the internet capabilities for the built-in e-mail client. Every once in a while, when I'm caught in a bind and need access to some particular bit of information, I'll use the web browser, and that's it.
As far as mobile web browsing goes, no, you don't really need 24/7 connectivity, and if you need to do very much, it's better to use a desktop client. However, now that I have a web browser in my pocket, I can tell you that I do find it more useful than I would have thought. I've been in situations where I couldn't find the location of something or I needed to find someone's phone number, and I was able to fetch that information on my iPhone web browser pretty easily. I would have otherwise been pretty lost, and had to wait until I found an internet connection to find the thing I was looking for, so the whole thing was really helpful.
And though I wouldn't advise using the iPhone on EDGE for heavy everyday surfing, it really will work in a pinch. You'll be able to load a real website, the website will render properly most of the time, and it isn't entirely frustrating to browse around a little. Using the web browser in short bursts won't drain your battery too terribly quickly. EDGE is slow and uses more battery than WiFi, but like I said, it'll do if you really need a web page or two right then.
So if all you're saying is that the iPhone isn't a good replacement for your laptop or desktop computer, I'll go along with that. But if you're saying it isn't useful to have your e-mail client, MP3 player, web browser, calendar, address book, Google maps, digital camera, and cell phone be all in one slim, easy to use device, then I think you're crazy. If you think the iPhone doesn't execute this decently well for most people's uses, then I think you're either biased or ignorant.
I guess you could also argue that we should all slow down, stop using our fancy gadgets and doodads, and just not be "connected" most of the time. Do most of us absolutely "need" a cellphone? I guess not. Human civilization went for a long time without any internet or telephones at all. But all things considered, I'd rather have a cell phone than a landline, and I'd rather have mobile e-mail than not. Ideally, in my mind, I wouldn't have to have a "phone" at all, but I could have a wireless IM/VOIP/e-mail device. However, you need ubiquitous wireless internet access in order to do that, and nobody is really providing that yet except cell phone companies. Cell phone companies won't sell a IM/VOIP/e-mail device unless it's also a phone.
Man moderators are on crack today. Look did you read the article?
He starts off saying both virtual and normal QWERTY are bad. No examples, no proof, nothing. BUT yet then in another part states why the iPhone screen is so much better giving specific pixel info.
So how come he doesn't go into detail then about the pros and cons on the keyboard? Why spend so much detail in one section (display) but not really any details at all about the input?
His rules that he created are biased. You can;t use the devices then create the rules. He should have gone out and asked people what they expected, used that for the rules then compare. He made the rules when he already knew the answer. That has 0 value.
Why didn't he put other browsers on the smart phones that accept them and give feedback on those? If he was going to go on what is the default fine, but since he gave so much detail on the screen size why didnt he say things in the browser review about 3rd party options may solve the issues.
He does all the real details on the thing the iPhone is very strong on (display) and doesn;t put the same detail to his other rules. Something does not add up.
So please tell me how my post was a troll?
I'm not sure why the Nokia e61i was left out. I've never been a big cell phone freak; I moved up to an e61i after some twelve years of el cheapo nokias. QWERTY, excellent battery life, briliant screen (even in direct sunlight), wifi, superb call quality, superb speakerphone, the web browsing is a dream (has this handy zoom out feature, and when you scroll for a long time it zooms out also; totally usable). Dammit, it even has a 2 mp camera, blackberry software (though I don't use bb) and... here's the cracker, PYTHON! Doesn't get much more smart phone than that.
The Banjo Players Must Die!
What, are you kidding? Quit buying ringtones, stupid!
Consumer whores like you are what enable the industry to be as screwed up as it is!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz